In the Rain
by Tie-dyed Trickster
Summary: Rain is pretty common in the jungle, and Geta's used to dealing with it. It's normal. Annoying, soggy, but normal. It's a little different with Raditz and Kakarrot there, though. Part 9 of the Geta!verse


_Takes place about a week after_ _ **The Mysterious Wanderers from Space**_ _._

A few days after Raditz and Kakarrot had moved their ship to Geta's clearing (after enlarging to clearing to make room (again (at this rate he was going to end up living in a village and that would be awkward))), it rained. Geta had been out checking nests, to see if any dinosaurs had any extra eggs to spare, and was just making his way home when the skies had opened.

Geta cursed. It wasn't that he disliked getting wet – swimming was fun and hot baths were a lot of work but very much worth the effort – but he liked getting wet _on purpose_. This was not on purpose.

So he was feeling decidedly soggy and more than a little grumpy by the time he made it home, where he found two equally soggy but far less grumpy saiyans outside their spaceship, apparently having a wonderful time. Kakarrot was splashing in puddles and kicking up water, clad only in the tight brown shorts and shirt of his small armor. Nearby, Raditz sat on a boulder, laughing at his brother, and apparently Raditz's small armor either hadn't come with a shirt or he hadn't felt like putting one on, because he wore only his black pants. Geta could understand the urge – he never wore a shirt either if he could help it – but Raditz hadn't struck him as the type to share this inclination. But the tall man seemed perfectly happy sitting there, shorter clumps of hair falling over his forehead from the weight of the water in them. He looked less alien with his exaggerated widow's peak hidden, if you ignored his tail. Geta's glanced up a bit at where his own hair was falling in his face - he had honestly been a little disappointed when his own bangs began to stiffen and eventually vanished into the rest of his hair as he grew older.

While he stood there watching, Kakarrot caught sight of him and waved enthusiastically. "Hi, Geta! It's raining – this is my second time _ever_ seeing it rain! Isn't it great?"

It had been fairly easy to get Kakarrot to just call him Geta, but Raditz refused to do more than drop the 'prince' – and Geta had had to order him to do that. Now, as the long-haired man turned to look at him, Geta hoped he hadn't ruined the moment. This was the most relaxed he had seen the other man yet, and it would be a shame to see him go all stiff and formal.

However Raditz merely grinned at him and waved him over. "Vegeta, come join us!"

He trudged over and deposited his eggs by his door before sloshing back to them, wiping water from his eyes as he did so. "I'd rather go get dry, if it's all the same to you."

Kakarrot looked horrified at this. "But- but if you do that _you'll miss the rain_!"

This sounded like the most horrible thing in the world according to the boy, but Raditz chuckled, standing up and walking over to the other two saiyans. "Don't pester him, brat. He doesn't know, and with all this vegetation, rain's probably pretty common here."

"Really?!" Kakarrot stared at Geta with sparkling eyes.

"Uh, yeah?" Geta scratched his neck, then turned to Raditz. "Why do you call him a brat all the time, anyway?"

Raditz blinked. "Because he is a brat."

"…I think we might be experiencing a language barrier. What's the word 'brat' mean to you?"

"Brat is another term for a young saiyan." Raditz replied. "What does it mean here?"

"It's a term for a really obnoxious kid."

"Kid?"  
"Child."

"Oh." Raditz looked Kakarrot up and down. "Still fits."

"Hey!"

"Anyway," Geta interrupted, "Back on the original subject, I get that Kakarrot wouldn't have experienced rain much, what with living in space and all, but why are _you_ so keen on it?"

Raditz smiled, but there was a distant quality to it now. "Vegetasei was mostly desert. We had some mountains, and there was more plant life near the oceans, but mostly it was dry and sandy. It rained a few times a year, and those were good times, celebration times. Our world was very red – the sands the colour of saiyan blood, the sky tinted scarlet, with thorny melkai bushes making a purple haze on the landscape here and there."

Geta found himself forgetting the rain as Raditz spoke, and Kakarrot went and leaned against his brother's leg. "Show us, Raditz."

Raditz didn't acknowledge his brother's words, but as he continued to speak, Geta felt an odd sensation, like a delicate brush inside his head, and pictures of the scenes Raditz described began to flow into his mind.

"Melkai were a nuisance most of the time," Raditz's voice blended with the images and the rain, "Tough and bitter, and sturdy enough to tear right through you if you were foolish enough to try and push through them. You never destroyed them, though, because in the rain they would bloom. The flowers were brown, but the fruit that followed… it was all colours, and it was all delicious. Most of the year we lived on meat and fish, and we lived harsh, warrior lives on our harsh, red planet. But when it rained… the melkai would be covered in fruit, and the desert was awash with colour, as far as the eye could see. Mother… she used to say the planet's soul came out when it rained."

Raditz closed his eyes and tilted his face into the downpour, the images becoming even clearer as he sank deeper into his memories.

"Most of the time we were warriors, and we fought over everything, just because we could. But when the melkai fruited… we didn't need to fight. We never destroyed them, so they grew everywhere, and that meant there was always enough to go around, even with saiyan appetites.

"Usually we clustered closely together, but when it rained, we spread thin over the planet. It was a time of stillness and solitude and plenty, the only time we ever saw natural fruit on Vegetasei. A time where you sat and really remembered how lucky you were to have been born saiyan."

The images flowed slowly to a halt, and Geta opened his eyes in surprise, not realising he had closed them. Raditz had opened his eyes as well, and there was a touch of sorrow in his voice as he continued.

"There are no melkai bushes now. They would not grow off planet, never mind fruit, not that we could manage, anyway. And no one was interested in helping us try – we never found another race that could eat melkai fruit. So the melkai died with the rest of the planet. But I remember them, and the rain…" he looked down at Geta and grinned suddenly. "They used to say brats who were born during the rain were lucky, but I didn't believe it for a long time."

"Why not?" Geta asked quietly, resolving to ask about those images in his mind later on, to see if it really was Vegetasei he'd seen.

"Because," Raditz smirked, "I was born during the rain." Suddenly he snatched up his younger brother and flung him straight up into the clouds, Kakarrot shrieking with laughter, then turned to Geta again. "I thought you were going inside, though?"

Geta jumped, remembering his eggs. "Right, I was!" splashing over to his house, he opened the door and rolled one egg in with his foot, the other tucked under his arm. He came out again a moment later, though, carrying three much smaller oblongs with him. Kakarrot had just landed and was bouncing around his brother's feet begging 'again, again, again!'

"Wait a moment!" Geta called, trotting over, "Before you do that again, here." He offered the other saiyans two of the red-green things. "They're not the same and I've only got three, but these are mangos. They're a type of Earth fruit." He looked at Raditz nervously. "Eating colourful fruit in the rain's tradition, right?"

Raditz stared at the offered mango for a moment, blinking, then smiled. "Yes, it is."

Geta smiled back, pleased with himself.

And Bulma smiled as well, quietly to herself, as, from the window of her capsule house, she watched Geta show his new friends how to eat a mango.

 **OoOoOoOoOoO**

 _The images we see of Vegetasei show two main things about it – it's very red and it looks like it's got a lot of deserts. So it makes sense to me that it wouldn't rain there very often but that the times it did would be important. And a celebration circling around food and thinking about how awesome they are sounds very saiyan to me. ;)_

 _Raditz raised Kakarrot in this universe, and that included teaching him various things and answering all of Kakarrot's many questions about everything. At this point, it's just second nature to him to explain stuff. Which is good, because now that he's explained it all to Kakarrot, he gets to explain it all again to Geta, Bulma, and Yamcha! Yay! Also "throwing Kakarrot at things" is one of Kakarrot's favorite games. Gotta keep in mind, it's way more likely that whatever he hits is gonna break before he does._

 _Goku in canon has the ability to read minds and to communicate telepathically – we've seen him do this a few times. I haven't seen it used much in fanfiction beyond things like mating bonds or what-have-you, though, and I thought it would be interesting to do more with it. So, I'm going with the concept that all saiyans have limited telepathic abilities, the main limit being they can usually only use these abilities with other saiyans. Some saiyans have stronger abilities and can use these abilities on other species as well – Goku is an example of this and so is Kakarrot (since they're technically the same person). Geta can't, and neither can Raditz. Oh, and the reason Vegeta never brought any of this up in the series was because like heck he's admitting to_ _ **another**_ _thing Kakarrot can do that he can't. Not happening. ;P Anyways, you'll find out a bit more about all this in later stories. ^^_

 _Geta's house is in a crater, but this isn't his first rainstorm – he's made drainage ditches and stuff, so his house doesn't flood._

 _Raditz used to have two shirts until about a month before this story. They are currently both serving as insulation for the ship's engines and have been rendered unwearable by the process._


End file.
